Report documents scale of contraband drone drops to prisons

Newly published figures are offering an idea of just how enormous the problem of drone use to deliver contraband to prisons around the world has become, showing nearly 100 suspected UAV drops made to a single Canadian jail last year alone.

The statistics were part of a broader report published Thursday by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) illustrating the large and still growing plague of drugs, phones, weapons, and other contraband being smuggled into prisons via drone. Relying on access-to-information laws to procure figures compiled by Correctional Service Canada (CSC), the CBC documented 99 suspected UAV drops to Ontario’s Collins Bay Institution last year, compared to 44 in 2020, and 10 in 2018.

The escalating occurrence of drones spiriting contraband into prisons is a problem facing authorities everywhere in the world, with officials in Europe and the US regularly sounding warnings about the increasingly formidable…